Netanyahu Forges Ahead With the Coup, but Israel's President Insists on Playing the Mediator

from Haaretz

It took Israel's President Isaac Herzog two full days to respond publicly to the law the Knesset passed Monday. When he did, on Facebook Wednesday, he didn’t mention the repeal of the reasonableness standard nor the danger it poses to Israeli democracy.

He charged the coalition and the opposition jointly with reaching a compromise, while conceding that the former has more responsibility to find solutions.

Herzog accused the reservists, not the government, of jeopardizing national security and urged them to reconsider their threat.

He sounded very different in March, when he stood up against the judicial overhaul, saying it was “misguided, brutal and undermines our democratic foundations.”

There was no trace of this criticism Wednesday. Herzog claimed Israeli democracy was strong and there was no imminent danger of a government coup in sight. “I believe in the resilience of Israeli democracy and have undertaken to safeguard it. I stand behind every word, and insist that democracy is rooted deeply in the Israeli DNA,” he wrote.

 Benjamin Netanyahu, Yariv Levin and Simcha Rothman rudely ignored the president’s aides’ efforts to reach a compromise and submitted an extremist version of the reasonableness standard amendment to the Knesset Monday. The coalition and the opposition had been close to a joint version, but the government backed out at the last moment.

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